More New Features: Notes and Accessibility

Last time, we already talked about some new features that are coming with Kolab.org 3.3. Now, we will show you more features we are currently working on. Like last time, this is still work in progress. It is not ready and not packaged for you to try out just yet.

Still, there's more features to come and another post will follow soon. Stay tuned and monitor this channel for more updates.

Notes

Often you just want to note something down real quick. Today, we often use computers for that to have our notes available on all our devices everywhere and searchable.

Currently, it is only possible to work with notes using the Kolab Desktop Client. With Kolab.org 3.3 you will also be able to work with these notes in the webclient. As with all things Kolab, you can also have multiple notebooks and share them with people. The screenshot on the right shows the current state of development and as you can see it already uses the new folder management in the bottom left corner.

The notes are automatically synchronized with the Kolab Desktop Client and you will also be able to synchronize them to your mobile devices via the ActiveSync protocol.

Notes can be tagged just like tasks and they can have rich-text content including graphics. They can be printed right from the webclient and also sent via email.

In the email view, you can add little notes to emails. It will be possible to view and edit your notes before appending them to email messages. If you have notes linked with an email, they are listed at the top of the email preview, like you can see here:

Accessibility improvements

We reviewed and improved our entire web client regarding the accessibility for people that require assistive technologies. The user interface can now be fully operated with the keyboard and has support for screen readers as well as voice output as suggested by the WCAG 2.0 Guidelines and ​WAI ARIA standards.

As an example, for the email view you are now able to tab through all the button elements, operate the message list and the popup menus. Once the message list gains focus, the arrow keys move the cursor while <space> selects the row and <enter> opens the message. A descriptive block explaining the list navigation was added to the page, so screen readers can pick it up.

All these improvements will make it a lot easier for people that require assistive technologies to use the Kolab webclient. They will also benefit the millions of Roundcube users out there as we strictly bring all our modifications back to the upstream communities.

We hope you enjoyed this quick tour through some of the new Kolab features and are excited about what we will reveal next time.